


Its a Surprise!

by Lastactiontricia



Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-07 10:56:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16852735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lastactiontricia/pseuds/Lastactiontricia
Summary: Status: One ShotWord Count:1145Category: HorrorRating: 18+ It’s a horror story folks so its prolly triggery afCharacter(s): Winchesters passing like ships in the night, reader, some other foolsPairing(s): noneWarnings: see rating aboveAuthor’s Note(s): Based on a true story of a guy who found this in a thrift store, I imagined a more horrible ending than being rick-rolled, the pic is of the real tape, not exactly the one described here. Happy Halloween! I’m hoping to do one horror story a day leading up to the big H, but we’ll see how that goes.Overall Summary: Not every case is a winner. You can’t save everyone. Sometimes you don’t even get the chance.





	Its a Surprise!

The sweaty smell of the Goodwill store shamed its name. If poverty had a smell, it was that nervous hard plastic scent that pervaded your nose the second you walked onto the cheap vinyl tile. You hated shopping here, it was for hipsters and people who couldn’t afford better. And, thank God, you weren’t a hipster. The old video racks from Blockbuster held clothes and various household items. Snagging a pair of pants that looked somewhat serviceable, you head to the counter.  
“Throw in another five and I can get you a grab bag, they have clothes and stuff” the attendant says, too brightly.   
What the fuck, why not. You nod at her to affirm and she hands you an overstuffed paper grocery bag. The flannel on top already makes it worth it.   
Bumping into your neighbor on the way up to your apartment-you drop your bags, and she drags her little boy away from you like you’re a monster. Readjusting your scarf to cover the scars after she passes, on a whim-you switch your names on the call button directory.  
Digging thru it at home, curious to see what you’ve gained- Two flannels and socks mostly. At the very bottom of the bag is a VHS tape, the gift wrapping of past labels thick with erased contents. In thick magic marker over the faded pen marking -Christmas 1993, someone had scrawled -It’s a Surprise! Complete with a smiley face. That face was chill inducing-the eyes were too slanted, the crooked grin more of a leer.   
You watch it that night, late. Your shift at the bakery meant you got off just before the sun rose, in that liminal space between day and night. The sky was pearling outside your window when you heard the Christmas music, the sound of ripping paper. A family scene- two children in a modest house tearing into their presents with glee. You feel strange watching it, voyeuristic. Like you were staring at them through their window. You get up to switch the tape off when the screen goes black, the white noise it emits gives you pause, startling in its loudness.   
The same living room comes back on screen, but its just an empty room, patient, waiting for someone to fill it. The screen goes dark again. You switch off the video feed, you couldn’t stare at that empty room anymore.   
It lays in your VCR, mocking you. The days go by, watching the clock wind up and down like it was the same one on the wall of the video house. You dream about someone filming the empty rooms of your apartment. You wake from nightmares imagining a red light of a camcorder, blinking it away like sandman’s grit.   
Beth from work is getting on your case again. More overtime at regular pay? No thanks. She acted like you shit on her face when you told her no. Watching her fuck about on Facebook all night while you baked wasn’t punishment enough? Her and Kate make work seem so bad that watching the video seems a nice reprieve. You flip it back on, watching the empty room and try to zone out, calm down with boring repetition. The screen flickers for a moment and then there’s a change. A dark smear on the carpet. A hand reaches into the screen from the far right, grasping at carpet fibers in a pulling motion.   
The screen goes black again.   
You flip the tv off, your hand shaking. A shudder works its way up from your stomach, trailing guilt in its wake. You don’t want to know what happens next. You’ve had your slice of tragedy already. Ripping the tape out of the deck, you hurl it out a window. The splintering plastic sound you hear unknots your muscles-but doesn’t dry the nervous sweat that cropped up. Laying down in bed, pretending to sleep-but its a dance you’ve forgotten the moves to.   
Days go by and the sheer amount of them takes the edge off. You don’t dream about that grasping hand anymore. That small red recording light that’s haunted you finally burns out on your head. When baking apple tarts you hear Beth and Kim freak out over something blaring over the news. Kim drags you out into the front, pointing towards the tv.  
Its your apartment building. They’re wheeling bodies out of the parking lot, official suits there- questioning people. They’re asking for neighbors to come forward with any information. That yellow tape drapes over everything- bad shit happened here, you can almost feel the cool plastic tear against your fingertips. The phantom sensation makes you hyperventilate, makes you feel trapped, like before. Beth lets you go home, concern only half-fake this time.  
There are two guys creepily sitting in a black classic car, staring up at the apartment building, they watch you too close and it makes your skin crawl. The building closes them off from you, the click of the lock loud in the lobby. Too many cheery Christmas lights surround you, the glow is supposed to be welcoming but it ends up being eerie-you see that all the lights in her strand, all but the red, are burned out or broken on your neighbor’s door. All that red reflecting off that yellow tape. Dully glinting off the paper crime scene sign. Red like the light on a camera when its recording.   
There’s a card taped to your front door, some fed-what kind of name was Rick Savage anyway? Leaving it hang, you move to your neighbor’s door. The lock part is broken and the only thing holding you back was two inches of police sealing tape. You don’t know what comes over you- but you’re cutting the tape with a key and slipping inside before you know it. You don’t look at the stains on the floor, or the walls. You head to the tv, flip the VCR on. What comes out makes the bile rise in your throat.   
It’s a Surprise! That tape mocks you through its sad doctoring. Someone had pieced it back together. Hearing something through the shared wall- the sound of VCR static, it gets louder and louder until you feel the vibration of it. You’d always cursed how thin they were until now.   
There’s no laundry chute to hide in this time.  
Memories crowd your brain, that trauma of your childhood, of your family being slaughtered as you hid in the wall, the sounds of their screams burned into your ears. That claw-like hand reaching for you, scratching up the walls of that laundry chute until dawn came. You make it to the bathroom, edge open the window as quietly as possible, and ease out onto the fire escape. The sound of the ladder dropping is so loud you cringe, but you don’t look back, not even when you hear your window thrown open hard enough to shatter.  
Time to move again.   
When you find yourself on the other end of the country, there’s another bakery, another endless repeat of double shifts. You burn off every night like a cigarette. The package comes to you at work, and some part of you isn’t surprised. Its wrapped like a Christmas present, gold ribbon and all. You unwrap it with slow dread, a VHS tape emerging. You recognize your mother’s cursive- Christmas 1992- underneath the ruddy block letters- SORRY-WRONG TAPE.


End file.
